– If electrolytes are salt, and salt makes you dehydrated, how do electrolytes help you retain water?
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* When you pour table salt into fresh water, the salt dissolves and spreads out throughout the water.
* Also, if you put a drop of fresh water in a glass of salty water, the fresh water “spreads out” and mixes with the salty water.
From these two facts, we know that salt and water like to spread out, and reach an even concentration everywhere. This is also true in your body – salt moves from more salty places to less salty places, and water moves from less salty places to more salty places.
When you eat some salt, water in your body is pulled towards that salt, making the rest of your body saltier too. That’s why eating too much salt makes you dehydrated, and in that case you need fresh water to help dilute that salt.
But sometimes you already have too much water in your body – for example, maybe you’ve sweated out a lot of salt and water during a run, and you have been drinking fresh water to replace the water. In that situation, adding salt is the right thing to do – it makes your body saltier, and gets your body back to the “sweet spot” of saltiness.
Electrolyte sports drinks are just water, salt, and a bunch of sugar to make it taste okay. The ratio of salt to water is the same as it is in your body, so that when when you drink it, you replace both the salt and the water that you lost through sweating.
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